I am a typical company guy. I work for a major pharmaceutical company and am in management. I ave a few computers around the house that are usually left running and needed a good screen saver.
Thoughts about SETI and SETI@home
I heard about the SETI@home project on National Public Radio back in May of 1999. I visited the website and thought that the screen saver looked better than the flying toasters I had at the time. We have a computer in the kitchen that is an old Pentium II used for e-mail. The screen saver is an interesting conversation starter. People still ask what kind of complex data analysis the computer is running. When I mention that we're waiting to see if we have ET's phone number yet, it gets a laugh or two.
I know that the project is rapidly winding down. It was great being part of the distributed computing cutting edge. Hopefully, new projects will come along that will spark the imaginations of millions.
SETI@home and Astropulse are funded by grants from the National Science Foundation, NASA, and donations from SETI@home volunteers. AstroPulse is funded in part by the NSF through grant AST-0307956.
